\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nStrange phone calls<\/h2>\n
P\u00e1va had approached Citizen Lab to have his phone examined even before the Pegasus Project stories were published in mid-July. He told Direkt36 that he made that decision because he had experienced several oddities with his phone in the spring. He said his calls were often disrupted even in places where he didn’t usually have a problem with signal, and he sometimes heard sounds as if the caller on the other end had “fallen underwater” during a conversation.<\/p>\n
P\u00e1va said he sent his phone data to Citizen Lab professionals on July 14, with whom he came in contact through one of his acquaintances. P\u00e1va said he had no idea at the time that his phone had been infected with Pegasus, he simply suspected that he was being under some kind of surveillance.<\/p>\n
Citizen Lab\u2019s analysis found traces of Pegasus in the files and notified P\u00e1va in late July. The results of that forensic examination were also confirmed by security experts from Amnesty International who performed the analysis of the phone at the request of Direkt36. P\u00e1va said that he had asked Citizen Lab to check the phones of his colleagues at Ezalenyeg.hu too, but no infections were found on those devices.<\/p>\n
According to P\u00e1va, it is \u201cdire and frightening\u201d that it can be a cause for surveillance if a journalist, lawyer, or businessman is critical of the government and dares to express it. \u201cI am very hopeful that those who were under surveillance are not afraid. I\u2019m definitely not afraid, and that is why I would like to go public because I have nothing to hide,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
P\u00e1va has never been in the front lines of politics but has had ties to prominent players in the current opposition. His father was one of the most influential politicians of the Socialist Party in Baranya County for a long time. He was also a member of the same party but said he had quit in 2010 and has not joined any other political organization since. Between 2008 and 2010, he served in the government led by the Socialists as political advisor.<\/p>\n
After Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s party defeated the socialists by a landslide and came back to power in 2010, P\u00e1va quit politics and worked in a street advertising company he runs together with his wife, he said. He returned to politics in 2019, when he became the publisher of a newly launched news portal, Ezalenyeg.hu. The site, which strongly criticized the government, stood out in the municipal election campaign with a very strong social media presence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAccording to investigative outlet Atlatszo, Ezalenyeg.hu and its various local versions spent more than 68 million forints (194 thousand euros) on Facebook advertisements, which was much higher than what Gergely Kar\u00e1csony, the opposition\u2019s candidate in Budapest, spent himself (22.5 million forints or 64.2 thousand euros). Kar\u00e1csony eventually won the mayoral race, and the opposition won in several other larger cities. Sources from the opposition campaign told Direkt36 previously that the secret of their success was partly their social media presence, and Ezalenyeg.hu contributed significantly to this.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the opposition media, we play the role of those who dare to publish anything, but our main rule is that we never lie. We have won more than 95 percent of the lawsuits against us,\u201d P\u00e1va said. He added that they speak \u201cin such a free spirit that the other outlets do not speak.\u201d<\/p>\n
P\u00e1va gave a general answer to questions about the news site\u2019s financial background, including the one about how they were able to spend nearly 70 million forints during the 2019 campaign. He said that, in addition to advertising revenue, they also have private supporters like more and more other newspapers. He added that although he is the sole owner of Oraculum 2020, the publisher of the outlet, there are several other investors behind the company, but he refused to reveal their names.<\/p>\n
P\u00e1va said that he does not understand why he was under surveillance between March 16 and May 27. He had just fallen ill with coronavirus the day his phone was hacked, so he went on sick leave and attended only a few online meetings in the weeks that followed. He considers it possible that he was not the main target. \u201cI have a lot of friends who think that change is needed in Hungary,\u201d he said, and added that he regularly speaks with politicians as well.<\/p>\n
P\u00e1va said he has not seen any signs of confidential information leaking while he was under surveillance. He added, however, that a suspicious episode had taken place earlier this year.<\/p>\n
P\u00e1va recalled being approached by a former business partner who wanted to hire a communications specialist for a project at one of Hungary\u2019s universities. They had preparatory meetings, but those were confidential, and they did not involve anyone else.<\/p>\n
At some point, however, P\u00e1va said that his business partner sent him a message through someone else that he wanted to meet him in person. He then told him that he had been told not to work with P\u00e1va. The partner found this very suspicious because he had not told anyone about the planned cooperation.<\/p>\n
Blocked inquiries<\/h2>\n
NSO claims to sell Pegasus exclusively to foreign governments and state agencies to fight terrorism and organized crime. However, the identification of leaked phone numbers revealed that the spyware was also used against journalists, human rights defenders, politicians, and businessmen from Mexico through Azerbaijan to India.<\/p>\n
The database also contains more than three hundred Hungarian telephone numbers, including four Hungarian journalists (Brigitta Csik\u00e1sz, D\u00e1vid Dercs\u00e9nyi, Szabolcs Panyi, Andr\u00e1s Szab\u00f3), a Hungarian photographer, media company owner Zolt\u00e1n Varga and six of his acquaintances (including former minister of economy Attila Chik\u00e1n), as well as the son and lawyer of former oligarch Lajos Simicska. But opposition politician Gy\u00f6rgy G\u00e9mesi, Hungarian Bar Association president J\u00e1nos B\u00e1n\u00e1ti, and nine other lawyers, as well as former state secretaries Attila Asz\u00f3di, and Bal\u00e1zs Weingartner also show up. (Details in these stories.<\/a>)<\/p>\nOpposition parties have initiated a parliamentary national security committee to investigate the Pegasus case, but the governing Fidesz party has blocked the inquiry. Although the Minister of the Interior, S\u00e1ndor Pint\u00e9r, who oversees several secret service agencies, appeared before the committee at the end of July, the hearing was not held because Fidesz\u2019 representatives, who are in majority in the committee, did not show up.<\/p>\n
Late July, the prosecutor’s office announced that an investigation had been launched into \u201cunauthorized secret information gathering.” According to the statement at the time, the purpose of the investigation was to find out if a crime had occurred at all. The prosecutor\u2019s office has now told Direkt36 that the investigation is ongoing and \u201cseveral journalists have been questioned as witnesses and requests for information have been made in the proceedings; so far, there is no suspect in the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Szabolcs Panyi contributed reporting.<\/em><\/p>\nCover picture: Szarvas\/Telex<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Previous reporting showed that Pegasus was used against Hungarian targets in 2018 and 2019. Now there is evidence that Zolt\u00e1n P\u00e1va, a former politician who is a news publisher now, was under surveillance in March and May this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-telex.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[274],"ppma_author":[522],"class_list":["post-9799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-megfigyelesek","tag-pegasus","author-cap-andraspetho"],"authors":[{"term_id":522,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-andraspetho","display_name":"AndrasPetho","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","description":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9799"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/gwHC9zd3V_Q\/maxresdefault.jpg\")